


Foreign

by the_ocean_burned



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam's parents are mentioned, Fluff, M/M, Minor Angst, adam is sad and needs a hug, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-18 22:04:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12397164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ocean_burned/pseuds/the_ocean_burned
Summary: Based on "Ways to say 'I love you'" Prompts from Tumblr.16 - Over and over again, till it's nothing but senseless babble.22 - Muffled, from the other side of the door.





	Foreign

Many things were foreign to Adam Parrish. He had never been outside the country, and he had never even really been outside Virginia before college, and even then he was only a few hours away. He hadn’t seen anything stranger than Cabeswater, anything more mystical than Gwenllian’s tomb, anything more frightening than the demon or more aweing than the dream Ronan had given physical form. Really, Adam Parrish hadn’t seen much of anything, so there was a lot that could be classified as ‘foreign.’ And yet, perhaps the most alien thing of all was the phrase _‘I love you.’_

Adam had realized this, between snatched sleep and homework and rotating shifts at his various jobs. It had been a sudden thing, this epiphany, and he had spent long hours staring up at the crumbling ceiling of his apartment, torn between denial and desperately trying to remember any time that he had been told that someone loved him. But no matter how hard he struggled, the memories would not surface, because they were not there in the first place. Adam had never heard the words _‘I love you’_ directed at him.

It hurt. Adam wouldn’t deny it. The knowledge that no one in his entire eighteen years of life had cared enough about him to say _‘I love you’_ was painful, and so he tried to avoid thinking about it as much as physically possible. He knew that people loved him. Gansey and Blue and Noah and Henry were all the closest things to siblings Adam had ever had, and he knew, logically, that they loved him. Ronan loved him, too, even more strongly than the rest, and Adam was even surer of that. He loved them, too. _It doesn’t matter if we never say it,_ Adam had tried to convince himself once, _as long as I know it._ But it didn’t feel the same.

If Adam was being honest with himself, he hadn’t even _felt_ loved until he met Gansey and Ronan. He had always been too busy with schoolwork and hoping to any higher power that might have been listening anymore that he would get out of Henrietta, that someday he would he would go somewhere that no one knew his father and he would be able to be free of that awful man, to bother with friends for most of his life, and Adam was reminded daily of how little his parents loved him.

But then he suddenly had friends, and love became a far more tangible concept. It was still a privilege, no matter how vehemently Gansey disagreed, but Adam had somehow earned a tiny allotment of that privilege and he held it close, protecting it as much as he could. That little bit of reassurance was all that got him through some days. The knowledge that, at the very least, a few people would look for him if he disappeared was what kept those long, painful nights that Adam had spent cowering and trembling in a corner from breaking him completely.

Until then, Adam had never understood why characters in books and things were so intensely driven by love and friendship, but after he met Gansey and Ronan and Noah, Adam thought maybe it made a little more sense, now.

And then they had met Blue, all hell had broken loose, and Adam had done his best to deal with it. He didn’t think he had done a very good job of it, but he was still alive, so he couldn’t have done too poorly, anyway. He came out the other side of the chaos with new friends, a friend who had been newly resurrected, a completed search for a lost Welsh king, and a boyfriend.

That was, perhaps, the strangest outcome of the search for Glendower. The fact that he had a boyfriend was no strange, in and of itself, but the fact that said boyfriend was none other than Ronan Niall Lynch most definitely _was._ If someone had told Adam the day he stepped onto the Aglionby Academy campus for the first time that he was going to be dating Ronan by the time he graduated, he would have laughed. At the time, he would have thought it was a cruel joke, because how could someone like _Adam_ end up dating someone like _Ronan?_ It was impossible, he would have said, and then that night he would have listed all his shortcomings to himself a thousand times over to make sure any trace of imagination was completely and thoroughly dead. Adam had no issue with his sexuality, but he knew his father would, and there was nothing Adam wanted more than to avoid Robert Parrish knowing his son was bisexual. Adam had heard the things his father said and he didn’t want to be in the blast zone if that cat ever clawed its way out of the bag.

And yet, here he was. Here Adam was, Ronan’s back pressed to his chest, the rumble of Ronan’s soft snores vibrating through Adam’s ribcage. This was not a dream. This was Adam’s life, and he didn’t think he’d ever been happier to be himself.

Adam knew he should be asleep, too. It had to be two or three in the morning, and Ronan would have to get up soon for church. But sleep was hard to come by when Adam was overwhelmed by how content he was in that moment. He didn’t want to lose this peacefulness, when it had been so hard won.

The words had been pressing against Adam’s teeth for a while, straining to fall from his mouth and tumble out into the open. But Adam had never found a time that he thought was appropriate to say them, and he was almost afraid he would mangle them; taint them with his dust-filled accent and ruin them with his lack of understanding them wholly. They were still there, though, begging to be said, and Adam found that he could not deny them any longer.

“I love you,” Adam whispered, pressing the words into the back of Ronan’s neck. A burst of emotion filled Adam’s chest, threatening to drown him.

“I love you,” he murmured again, testing the way they felt in his tongue and rolling them around a little. “I love you.”

Again and again, the words flooded out of Adam’s mouth, making up for all the times he had never felt safe saying them when he was younger and then some. He said them over and over, until he nearly forgot what he was saying, until they were no longer quite so foreign, until he fell asleep with his lips still pressed to the nape of Ronan’s neck.

Less than two hours later, Ronan stirred, waking Adam as well. It was a crime, in Adam’s opinion, that Ronan had to get up so damn early for church, but if that was what Ronan wanted to do, who was Adam to stop him? Judging from the slightly-faster-than-molasses pace Ronan was moving at, he was late.

Adam rolled out of bed after Ronan, yawning a little. He wouldn’t be getting back to sleep now that he was up, and he figured he could use the spare time to explore the Barns some more. As Ronan searched for his church suit, swearing under his breath, Adam went into the bathroom. He winced a little when he saw the dark bags beneath his eyes, yawning again. Adam could hear Ronan, still swearing, rushing around to finish getting ready. Laughing a little under his breath, Adam splashed some water on his face.

“I love you!” Adam called through the bathroom door as Ronan passed by.

There was a thump and a loud expletive echoed down the hall as Ronan presumably ran into a wall. Adam smiled at himself in the mirror.


End file.
